August

Doctor Who told us there would be huge alien spacecraft smashing into Big Ben. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy envisaged a London that was completely destroyed and Star Trek: Into the Darkness went a little easier on us, describing a city filled with slick, curved skyscrapers. A futuristic city in the sky.

Who’d like to take a guess as to what London will be like in 2114? Last month’s blog was about London 100 years ago and the advances we’ve made between then and now in the fields of education, technology, aeronautics, transportation and scientific and medical research have been nothing short of astonishing. But, in 100 years from now, will we, as Back to the Future predicted, be riding around on hoverboards, travelling through the space-time continuum and wearing self-fastening trainers?

London’s Physical Landscape

In terms of the physical landscape, a recent BBC study has suggested that while the jewels in our crown – St. Paul’s, the Tower of London and the Houses of Parliament – will stay essentially as they are, we are destined, given the influx of investment and foreign nationals making our city their home, for a ‘city of Shards’. Structurally and materially we will be building bigger, taller more advanced skyscrapers and the skyline will look vastly different to what we see today.

London Traffic!

One of the biggest grievances we have collectively is how bad the traffic is in London. It seems that any time of day or night and wherever you want to go you run into traffic. At the time of writing, petrol is around £1.30/litre and fossil fuel resources, if the Daily Mail to be believed, are dwindling and will run out next Tuesday. Electric cars are slow, take too long to charge and drain very quickly, hybrids are expensive and complex and hydrogen fuel cell-powered cars are still running into manufacturing and power-extraction issues.

If the current rate of technological advancement remains, we’ll see cars that communicate with each other, self-driving cars (Google are developing one), external airbags and self-diagnosing cars, but will they do anything to stop the North Circular Road acting as a giant car park?

The Tube in the Summer…

Hands up who loves getting on the Tube in the summer with three million other people in conditions way above the permitted temperature for transporting cattle? Siemens are developing a driverless, fully wi-fi-enabled train – the Inspiro, below – that’s claimed to be 30% more efficient and 20% lighter with a bigger capacity and full – yes, FULL – air conditioning. Transport for London say that by the end of 2016 there will be 191 walk-through, air-conditioned trains on 40% of the tube network (Circle, District and Hammersmith & City lines) but the issues remain for the deep lines where conventional air-con has been effectively ruled out due to the lack of space for equipment and the perennial problem of dispersing waste heat.

Unpopular with unions it may be but Londoners of the future will still need to get around town and perhaps this is the way to do it.

Money, money, money…

The grief the banks landed us in a few years ago may have signalled a long, slow death knell. The rise of decentralised crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin could well revolutionise how we transact. By 2050 or thereabouts, we may be well on the way to a having just a few regional currencies left fighting against a single worldwide electronic currency, similar in principle to the Euro but on a global scale. What do you think a single currency should be called?

The Most Cosmopolitan City in the World…

Walk through central London today and if you listen carefully, you’ll hear dozens and dozens of languages and dialects from all four corners of the world. It’s one of many things that makes our city so great but in 100 years from now, what languages will we be hearing? Minor languages are dying out remarkably quickly and with over a quarter of the world’s population speaking English, Spanish and Mandarin, these three could well become the dominant languages the world over as early as the end of the 21stcentury as trade, education and science converge.

The truth is, no-one really knows with any degree of certainty what life in London will be like in 2114, but there is one thing we do know for sure. As our children and grandchildren learn about what life was like way back in 2014, they will know that when tourists came to London, the best place to book accommodation was with a company called Euracom!